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Superior Spider-Man #1

So our hero Otto Octavius is now the Superior Spider-Man. He's using his scientific expertise to create new inventions at Horizon although he's secretly seething that Peter Parker gets the credit and not him. He's also dealing with a new "Sinister Six" comprised of C-list villains, something that offends him (being the founder of the original team).

On a date with MJ...

At the end, the Superior Spider-Man is about to finish off the Six...

In all honesty I'm actually not crazy to see that Pete is still "around". That he would return eventually is a foregone conclusion but I wish we could have had more of Otto doing his thing before revealing that, yes, the "real" Spider-Man will come through at the end.

On a related note here's a second printing variant for #700 which I would actually consider buying if it didn't cost eight bucks.

Not surprised at all that Peter is still there, and I'm glad too. This was a terrible idea from the get go. For one, the prolonged outcome of this story can only lead to Doc Ock to raping MJ (via deception) and that is NOT cool. Secondly, the way they describe the "mind swap" makes me think this is still Peter Parker just temporarily brain washed to think he's Doc Ock.

I beg to differ. The whole "villain switches places with the hero for a time" has been done before, such as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's not automatically a terrible idea. And no, it's NOT inevitable that MJ will end up sleeping with Otto - I bet good money that it will never happen, no matter how much it's teased.

I like the little visual joke about Ock!Peter filling up his glass and not even thinking to do MJ's. If they could possibly subtlefy their relationship a tiny bit and not keep hitting you in the face with "He might bang her, readers! He might bang her!" that would actually be fun to follow.

Except how long could we expect it to be before MJ just dumps him because he's being a jerk? Anything longer that about three dates would be excrutiating. (He even calls her "dearest" in a non-ironic fashion for pities sake)

Ugh. Fuck this shit. I mean, I get that we're meant to subscribe to the notion of Octavius being a fat nerd who never got any, but it strikes a really pathetic balance to have him being all sophisticated and science-like and then basically 'OOOHH CHECK OUT DEM TITTIES!!' basically, which is what I'm getting from the pages above. Again, I know Octavius is like, captain science geek or whatever, but the guy would have seem some breasts before, surely?

And then Slott has to go with one of the most ridiculous explanations as to why Otto will inevitably be stopped; So we can completely forgo, I assume, the idea that this could have been a mature and careful exploration of the (admittedly ridiculous) idea of a villain trying to make good in another man's body and inevitably not being able to make it work, and instead he's just going to be completely fucked up and nasty and has to have A FUCKING GHOST stop him.

Gee, I just love how this whole scenario is making MJ look like a friggin' idiot. Please tell me there are some other pages where she is suspicious about how he is acting. Please? Because this is the woman who knew that Chameleon was pretending to be Peter within minutes. And yes, I know that it's still Pete's body, but it is so insanely obvious that it isn't him. There's the different speech patterns, the drinking, the monitoring criminals but not actually doing anything about it, the odd facial expressions and hand gestures. He's calling MJ "dearest". When has Peter ever talked like that?

Agreed. Although, based on how the "Next: Peter Parker and Mary Jane, Together Again?!" blurb, I'm hoping that in the next issue, we get a flashback of what happened in-between SpOck's dinner date and him mopping up the "new Sinister Six" and it's revealed that SpOck passed out drunk, thanks to Peter's low tolerance for alcohol, which allowed Force Ghost Pete to briefly take over and explain to Mary Jane what happened to him, thus MJ will be playing along in order to spy on SpOck.

Then again, based on the solicit for Superior Spider-Man #3, I think it's possible that Carlie going to wind up figuring out the truth before MJ does.

And yeah, SpOck comes across as a complete and utter douche just like Alpha, only smarter and with Batman's "prep-time." Which I guess is the point, but it doesn't make it any less annoying--especially since he's supposed to be the so-called "hero" of the comic now. And doesn't this (along with the reveal that Peter is still "alive") also undermine the entire supposed premise of Superior Spider-Man that Doc Ock, having reformed, was on a path to redemption? Now it seems like what we're actually going to get is the superhero version of All of Me.

Forget why MJ hasn't figured it out it, WHY is she on a date with this asshole? Why hasn't she noticed the BLATANTLY OBVIOUS disrespect she's getting and get the hell out of there? If even this was 'Peter', the man she loves, since when does MJ take this sort of bullshit?

Is this some sort of sadistic ploy on the part of the writers? "Oh sure, MJ and Peter will get back together, but only with a sleeze in Peter's body and MJ being too big of an idiot to notice! Happy now?"

See, it not only bothers me that MJ is - as usual, under the pen of Dan Slott - being portrayed as Peter's idiot ex, but also the fact that we have PRECEDENT that she is not this stupid.

Hey, everyone! Remember when Mary-Jane Watson was able to instantly recognise that the Chameleon was impersonating Peter, and beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat? Back when she was a smart, fiercely defensive and fantastically relatable character? Back when she was being written with a degree of...what's that word again...competence?

You mean back when writers would recognize a character would be too intelligent, and wouldn't make a character dumb just so the plot could move how they wanted to?

Back when writers would recognize what is built into their characters and find ways to make it work for the plot, rather than change the character willy nilly so their plot will continue without further thought?

Yeah, Slott's really writing her as a ditz here. Between Peter's vastly different choice of words and him acting like a cocky douchebag, she should suspect that there's something wrong with him.

Even if she doesn't wonder if he's being mind-controlled, or if she's dealing with another clone or another shapeshifter, or any of the other possibilities that living on Earth 616 raises, she should be wondering if he has a brain tumor or something.

That fan comic that was posted here a while back, the one where everybody saw through Ock because he kept saying "insolent fools!"? That's actually not too far removed from what we're seeing here.

Booooo. I really was hoping to get Doc Ock's take on Spiderman. Like his real take on being a better Spiderman than PeterParker. I know this ghost Peter thing will take care of a lot of problems like killing and Ock not having sex with MJ, but I really wish Slott had found another way to address them than ghost Peter.

Well, maybe Ghost Peter won't show up that much except as a Deus Ex Machine to keep Ock from doing Skeezy things.

You know, i would have agreed with you about giving Ock a chance, just to see what the character is like. I was actually kind of looking forward to it, its a genuinely interesting idea to me. And then that dinner seen is so atrocious. His whole attitude and demeanor is so awful and so un-Peter like (and un-Ock like) that I'm done with it. Entirely. If that's the way this is going to be, and if theyre really going to pretend MJ wouldn't notice something is wrong immediately, the sooner we get Pete back the better.

There's a scene earlier where Otto unthinkingly throws himself in front of a police officer to take an exploding boomeraang. Another scene where he is forced to admit to himself that all the accomplishments he will do from now on will be in Peter's name, not his. And his take-down of the Six in the next pages, along with the fact that he called for a camera crew to witness him, is both an indicator of his need to prove himself and awesome to boot.

There's plenty that explores what Otto-as-Peter is like. And the dinner scene isn't that bad.

I picked this up in my LCS and these are the exact pages I saw as I flipped through. I put it back on the rack.Honestly, I'm intrigued by the whole Force ghost Peter thing, some people here seem to think it's going to undermine the character development of Spider-Ock if he's used too much and that's definitely a valid complaint. Personally though, I really didn't buy Ock's heel-face turn, it didn't feel earned at all, and at this juncture I'm just really glad to see Peter stopping Ock from going too far.However, even though I'm like, 95% sure at this point that they're not going to actually do MJ/Ock, that dinner scene still looked so massively unpleasant that I put the book back out of sheer disgust.I'm interested in spite of myself though, so if they take MJ/Ock off the table I might actually be willing to give this a try.

So Peter will come out to stop Otto from killing a villain but will say nothing when Otto muses on his designs for the love of Peter's life (sorry, Marvel Editors, but she IS). And MJ suspects nothing (they really should have used one of Peter's other love interests if they were going to go that route)? This whole storyline is skeezy and uncomfortable. Why pay to read this?

There's a reason no one liked the "Ireedemable Ant-Man" and this is more of the same.

One of the reasons why I don't think Slott will go the route of Ock raping MJ by deception is because he's said that he wants Ock!Spidey to become more sympathetic to the reader and essentially grow from there.

I think he's smart enough to realize that making your antihero a rapist is not going to sell him to the audience as someone to root for eventually. Whereas with the Chameleon story from Van Lente, as in poor taste as that was, Chameleon was meant to be the bad guy.

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